That only looks that way, because the grass is greener on the other side. In Germany, one of the bigger EU countries, the German Telekom (former national telecommunication corporation) want to shape traffic for non-Telekom media products by 2016. The German government said: 'That is bad!' But they do not try to stop the Telekom from doing so. Sometimes there is only hope in the EU. And that is a rather strange feeling.

Actually, yes, it did. A prime example is Springfield, IL. CWLP, the power company, is owned by the city. It has the lowest rates, the lowest downtime, and the best customer service of any other power company in the state. After two strong EF2 tornados tore through town in March, 2006 everyone's power was back on within a week, even though huge swaths of the city no longer had standing utility poles. Three months later a weak EF1 hit the East Saint Louis area. They were without power for a month.

Remembering the times when Deutsche Telekom was still called "Deutsche Bundespost" and a state-owned monopoly, I can only say: NO WAY!!!

Why is it that so many people believe that a monopoly "works better" if it's state-owned instead of privately held? A private monopoly must at least make sure they are not being substituted away by some related technology (and therefore stay *somewhat* attractive), while *every single* government monopoly makes sure, using the law and force, that nobody competes with them,

That reminds me of the private telecoms monopoly of New Zealand, who for years kept raising prices to stay competitive. Then, one day, the government tells them the system is utterly inadequate, so they do.... absolutely nothing.

In the end, the monopoly split into two, and one half are building a "modern" fibre infrastructure. Instead of building it because they need it, they're building it because the taxpayer of New Zealand is paying them for it.

That's the problem right there. Their reason they were created is to enable communication for the German population, as best as humanly possible. Dividends paid by a infrastructure company are just greedy people leeching from the public. In fact, any net profit by such an organisation is a waste of resources, much better invested in upgrading the network or driving prices down.

That said, there's no reason why you shouldn't force them to rent out the last mile and allow private competitors. If these can comp

That tends to come with another problem: the government who should be regulating the industry also runs it. That can lead to governments using laws to maintain revenue, and not using laws which would be good for the functioning of those industries but would lead to political embarrassment. No government will pass tough environmental or consumer protection laws covering their industry, for example, if they're worried they're only going to be embarrassed later by failing to meet them themselves.

What should the government do?Write a Lex Telekom, especially targeting this company?

The consumer protection agencies and the Federal Cartel Office are on the case and inspect if the Deutsche Telekom is breaking laws.That's how it should be.

I'm opposed to the government changing legislation 'on the fly' just because one company does something bad.First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action.Then the parliament can look into the matter and if necessary make a new law after proper

First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action.

It doesn't. Otherwise it would have been pointed out by now. The law should also not be designed to address the direct issue, which came up recently, but it should address net-neutrality in general.

As I wrote: the consumer protection agencies (Verbraucherzentralen) and the cartel office (Bundeskartellamt) are analyzing the situation. So I'd say your wrong: It is not yet clear if the actions of the Deutsche Telekom can be addressed with current laws.

I'm opposed to the government changing legislation 'on the fly' just because one company does something bad.First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action.Then the parliament can look into the matter and if necessary make a new law after proper deliberations.

What country do you live in?

Where I'm from, the government is doing 50% kneejerk laws, without checking if existing laws covers the case (which is often the case)

There are examinations ongoing if the Telekom is using its market leader position for unfair practices, pecisely because of this.

Nice try. The head of the Federal Network Agency has recently been replaced by a party shill [golem.de]. Same guy who has now to explain a thing or two about how he secured a job [spiegel.de] for the ex-lover of one of Germany's top politicians of the Christian right.

in germany, there are no free/open wifi networks.copyright groups have owned the government and there are laws that make owner of the wifi connection guilty of whatever happened through it. coupled with insane laws on copyright (and spending money on enforcing them), this has resulted in eradication of anonymity. actually, thinking about it, government might like that a lot...

This is coming from the same politicians who claim that directing traffic from someone in Zimbabwe to a server in Zimbabwe is discrimination. European Union politicians simply cannot be trusted as none have been elected by the people, so one can only wonder whose interests they serve.

European Union politicians simply cannot be trusted as none have been elected by the people, so one can only wonder whose interests they serve.

That is quite a blanket statement. Members of the EU Parliament are politicians and directly elected by the people, so it is also wrong. Note that I am not saying that the European Union does not have serious democratic problems. The EU Parliament holds few of the powers usually attributed to parliaments and the EU Commission is appointed by the EU governments, so it is "buffered" against the people.

Indeed and there's more to it than that. Serious policy changes cannot happen without the consent of the Council of Ministers. This is a body made up of government ministers from member states. You don't get to be a government minister without some kind of democratic legitimacy. Of course the exact process by which people get appointed as ministers varies by member state.

Of course policy is also made by the courts. We like to maintain the fiction that courts just apply the law. But there's much more to it t

They're not just directly elected by the people either, they're directed through a form of proportional representation so they're actually more representative of the make up of each nation's vote than most national parliaments are.

Certainly the consistency and spread of EP representatives of the UK are much more representative of popular support than our national government is.

The EU-parliament is elected by the European people. The EU-commission is initiated by the governments of the EU-member states, which are either directly elected by the people or elected by their national parliaments. furthermore, the commission have to be approved by the parliament. It is true, however, that the EU-commission should be more transparent and it would be a great step forward if it would be initiated by the parliament or elected by the public. These changes would have been possible in the Lisb

There is Kroes and a number of others who want to keep the internet free, so it can defend democratic values and such.And then there are those who are bought by lobbyists, and who support the ISPs as well as the music/movie industry and wish to tie it down and control it, in the name of The Economy and Profit.

It's a good thing that Neelie Kroes is quite a big shot in the EU government (the "European Commission digital agenda vice-president" is important in this matter)...

Well, in the Netherlands the scam as you describe it has not started yet. In fact, the Netherlands has a healthy competition among ISPs, and an internet connection for 20 euro/month will get you a very reasonable 20 Mb / 1 Mb connection, and the wifi modem/router is included (free).

I believe that in the (near?) future, ISPs must also list a minimum up and download speed (if they are the bottleneck themselves), next to the maximum that they advertise with.

Actually not. Hosting copyrighted content and the infringement is dealt with according to law. But this does not mean that legitimate uses of bittorrent should suffer. There is nothing hypocritical about this. Just common sense.Not everything in the EU is roses and sunshine, but this is right and I welcome the effort.

What has a historical national court ruling got to do with future EU wide law planning?

There's nothing hypocritical there because you have two distinct bodies going different ways.

A dutch court has absolutely zero control over or relevance to future European Parliament legislation. If the EU goes ahead with this the dutch court will have to comply once it's government implements the relevant legislation.

Before you start accusing the Netherlands or the EU over being overzealus about this, consider that these laws were a response to the biggest mobile internet provider in the Netherlands announcing plans to block WhatsApp access, and only allow access to it to those who payed up, after people stopped text-messaging in droves in favor of WhatsApp. This didn't come out of the blue, and I personally feel stopping this sort of thing is a good(tm) thing.

Which will bite them in the ass so badly, it will hurt their ancestors:)

Because, you see, all I hear is "stream, stream, stream, cloud, cloud, cloud". If the content providers want my money they'll have to figure out that my monthly cap on my phone is 250 MB which is 1/4 of a movie, if you go HD even less. So, no streaming on my device. I don't even watch youtube there....

What do you think - who makes more money (therefore hold much larger political power) - the pipe-provider or the content-provider?

As this comes from European Commission digital agenda vice-president Neelie Kroes we can be sure it's covering the Real Thing.

She has an exemplary track record of protecting the consumer, the common man, and hitting at corporate interests that try the opposite.

Because the already existing Dutch example was mentioned we can assume the EU rules would follow a similar path and that's again a sign for a consumer-friendly ruling.
When the ruling is consumer friendly it will be a bonus for all, not just the single company that wants to bent the rules it's own way for profit.

Although Europeans have to remain vigilant about the various restrictions set on public speech, via the Internet or any other means, there is a wide agreement among many Europeans not all needs to be allowed.
Europeans will typically sooner accept a restriction set by a democratically elected legislature than by a commercial entity.

Europe, like any other region of this world, is dependent on its member states' economies being successful in maximizing their profits. That, and the fact that the EU in its heart is an economic union, not a civil rights institution, is the reason why there are, by conservative estimation, 15,000 lobbyists working in brussels, making 20 per member of the European Parliament, 550 per member of the European Commission. Which is why the EU, just as any other governmentorial institution in this world, usually c

That's not the point. The political spectrum can be as broad and wide as it may, within the general conditions of the existing economic world system nothing can be done without money, and money can only be extracted from the proceeds of a profitable domestic economy. So politics is, as a simple matter of fact, always and completely at the mercy of economy.

No, that's why even SYRIZA couldn't have helped Greece much without being able to extract substantial amounts of money from a profitable domestic economy, which unfortunately doesn't exist (while its remains are being squashed to death by the strict requirements attached to the EU financial aids).

Of course there are exceptions to the rule, otherwise ecology and resources and general living conditions would have already deteriorated to the point of being beyond all bearing.

EU lobbyism is nearly exclusively for big economy and big industry and there can be no doubt about it as it is, as of today, closely watched (e.g. by groups like http://www.alter-eu.org/ [alter-eu.org]). The notion that charity lobbies may have more influence in Brussels than big money is more than ridiculous.

What if I'm a customer and I want streaming audio prioritized, for the obvious reason that it's better not to have it burp when some software updater checks for patches?

It would be hard enough for technical people to define "network neutrality", let alone government. Don't get me wrong. I like the concept of network neutrality. Violations are like obscenity though. "you know it when you see it".

I think the best thing the government can do is define "the spirit of the law" and then let judges decide in c